In the art of heating and cooling of building spaces, the units which provide the conditioned air for such spaces are conventionally of a size and capacity as to require that they be installed at locations which are relatively remote from the spaces to be heated and/or cooled. For example, heating and cooling units for single and/or multiple family dwellings are conventionally located in the basement of these type of buildings and they are specified so as to supply conditioned forced air to multiple spaces via ducts which are installed in conjunction with the heating/cooling units. While these units may be of a similar configuration for various type building constructions, the required supply and return ducts are configured according to the architectural design of the particular building. For most heating/cooling installations, the ducts must be customized to a particular building design and this tends to increase the cost of the total heating and cooling system. In many cases the cost of the ducts and their installation may exceed the cost of the heating/cooling unit. This, of course, relates directly to the length and complexity of the duct runs necessary to reach the spaces to be heated and cooled. In this respect also, multi-story commercial buildings are usually designed to have a distance between the floors of about twelve feet allowing for an eight-to-ten foot ceiling height and the remaining two-to-four feet are allocated to the installation requirements of the heating and cooling ducts and other elements of the building construction.
While many advances have been made in the heating and cooling industry as it pertains to heating/cooling unit efficiency and capacity, not much has been accomplished in the elimination of ducts which are necessary to move conditioned air to and from building spaces which are remotely located with respect to a centrally located heating/cooling unit. In this respect also, the specifications made for heating/cooling units which are applied to a particular building construction are usually greater than necessary to heat and/or cool the volume spaces of the building. This is, of course, largely due to the length and complexity of the duct runs. Thus, it is the present practice to use large capacity heating/cooling units to supply conditioned air to multiple building spaces via ducts and this arrangement has not changed irrespective of the other advances in the industry.
It is, therefore, in accordance with one aspect of the present invention an object to provide a heating/cooling system which eliminates much of the ductwork that is required in presently configured heating and cooling systems.
According to another aspect of the invention it is an object to provide a heating/cooling system wherein the unit apparatus may be located in close proximity to the building spaces to be heated and/or cooled.
According to still another aspect of the invention it is an object to provide a heating/cooling apparatus which exhibits an efficiency, capacity, and cost such that multiples of the apparatus may be installed to meet multiple building space requirements, and this, irrespective of the the building design and/or configuration.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention it is an object to provide a heating/cooling apparatus comprised of in-line positioned blower and heat exchanger units which are configured for mounting within the volume space which normally exists between adjacent floor joists of a building structure such that the volume space between adjacent joists may be enclosed to function as the supply and return ducts of the heating/cooling apparatus.
According to still another aspect of the present invention it is an object to provide a heating/cooling apparatus which may be specified to meet varying heating and cooling requirements of various type building spaces.
Finally and in accordance with another aspect of the present invention it is an object to provide a heating and cooling apparatus which facilitates ease of servicing and replacement and the cost of which is dramatically lower than the large sized and high capacity units which are presently being offered by the heating and cooling industry.